Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 2 Religion and World Maintenance (day 3)

p 43. Berger states that "Other legitimating conceptualizations, such as those of modern psychology, have taken the place of religion." Interesting. Berger is saying that psychology is the integrating force of marginal situations in modern times as opposed to religion. He then continues on to discuss the confrontation with death as the most important radical marginal situation. This then comports with Santer's idea of death driven singularity. Berger then makes mention of mariginal situations as "ecstasy" or stepping outside reality as commonly defined. This then would be similar to the peak experience Maslow describes

p 45 Berger introduces the idea of a plausibility structure: a social "base" for its continuing existence as a world that is real to actual human beings.

p 47. "The less firm the plausibility structure becomes, the more acute will be the need for world-maintaining legitimations." As the Christian plausibility structure loosens in the 1950s then the Neo-Orthodox christian thinkers emerge. Humanistic psychology then would also be a counter-legitimation challenges the christian interpretation and looking to establish a themselves as a social base.

p51 The last paragraph of the chapter is fascinating. He reiterates the definition of religion as "the establishment, through human activity , of an all-embracing sacred order, that is, of a sacred cosmos that will be capable of maintaining itself in the ever-present face of chaos."